Writings from a marketer of whole food distribution, fun food, and ways to make your marketing stand out from the crowd.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Friday, November 19, 2010
Forecast: 1.7 billion mobile web users by 2013
Additional findings from the Juniper report:
- The Far East & China will represent the largest market for mobile web use, topping 415 million users by 2013, up from a year-end 2008 total of 190 million.
- The greatest potential for mobile web adoption lies in South America, while growth opportunities in markets like Western and Eastern Europe (which enjoy greater fixed broadband penetration) are more limited.
- A number of mobile Web 2.0 applications will hinge on flat-data or even free pricing, meaning industry players must seek new revenue streams.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Half hour of new Harry Potter film leaked
Thirty-six minutes from the latest Harry Potter saga appeared on an Internet downloading site, four days before its official release date.
The previous film in the saga, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, became one of the most pirated films of 2009, with more than 8 million illegal downloads being made, according to date from a report on pirate downloading websites. The film still managed to collect 934 million dollars in cinemas worldwide.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Clicks But No Conversions? It's the Landing Page Every Time.
Are you putting enough thought into your landing pages? If not, it's probably the main reason your conversions, or more importantly your revenue, aren't higher. At PubCon in Las Vegas, WebProNews spoke with Brad Geddes, Founder of PPC training firm bgTheory about advanced PPC and landing page optimization.
Clicks But No Conversions? It's the Landing Page Every Time.
Clicks But No Conversions? It's the Landing Page Every Time.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Buying unmeasurable media
Should you invest in TV, radio, billboards and other media where you can't measure whether your ad works? Is an ad in New York magazine worth 1,000 times as much as a text link on Google? If you're doing the comparison directly, that's how much extra you're paying if you're only measuring direct web visits...
One school of thought is to measure everything. If you can't measure it, don't do it. This is the direct marketer method and there's no doubt it can work.
There's another thought, though: Most businesses (including your competitors) are afraid of big investments in unmeasurable media. Therefore, if you have the resources and the guts, it's a home run waiting to be hit.
Ralph Lauren is a billion dollar brand. Totally unmeasurable. So are Revlon, LVMH, Donald Trump, Andersen Windows, Lady Gaga and hundreds of other mass market brands.
There are two things you should never do:
One school of thought is to measure everything. If you can't measure it, don't do it. This is the direct marketer method and there's no doubt it can work.
There's another thought, though: Most businesses (including your competitors) are afraid of big investments in unmeasurable media. Therefore, if you have the resources and the guts, it's a home run waiting to be hit.
Ralph Lauren is a billion dollar brand. Totally unmeasurable. So are Revlon, LVMH, Donald Trump, Andersen Windows, Lady Gaga and hundreds of other mass market brands.
There are two things you should never do:
- Try to measure unmeasurable media and use that to make decisions. You'll get it wrong. Sure, some sophisticated marketers get good hints from their measurements, but it's still an art, not a science.
- Compromise on your investment. Small investments in unmeasurable media almost always fail. Go big or stay home.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Why the Best Online Marketing May Be Headed Offline
Why the Best Online Marketing May Be Headed Offline - An article talks about the emergence of QR Codes and their use in marketing and the real world.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Can you grow your revenue using social media?
I often get asked how social media can make you and your firm money – or help you increase fee income. Social media can indeed help you to do this. But more importantly, it’s the routine, yet often overlooked parts of a marketer’s everyday duties that can not only be carried out by using social media websites but can be done better, more cost effectively and quicker by using them.
Imagine a marketing channel that offers almost infinite opportunities to promote, interact and prospect new business – it is here in the realm of social media marketing.
Don’t just think of it as a money making marketing opportunityAs websites such as Linkedin, Facebook, Xing and co begin to mature, marketers and fee-earners are often asking themselves how these can now help their firm make revenue. The simple answer is – as standalone websites or without using them intelligently - they won’t. This however, is the same as a print brochure, branded pen or any other marketing activity which is not linked together with your other business development activity. So what are successful users doing to integrate it?
It will build your brand, not just boost itIn my experience, few tools above digital marketing and social media websites have done more to take a firm’s brand to the next level, allowing firms to reach out to new audiences, target specific sectors and interact with clients
A recent statement by PepsiCo confirmed that they were now spending 60% of their forthcoming financial yearly budget on online advertising, proving that large multi-national organisations see online promotion as a key and expanding channel. Social networking sites give you opportunities to create your own company profile page, forum, group and ‘alias’ where people can link with your firm, discuss it, and often be a ‘fan.’
In what other environment have you been able to attract 100 ‘fans’ to your brand, as we recently did – and keep them closely aligned with updates on your events, articles and products posted to them – where the only investment is your time? The answer is probably in few other ways. Smaller firms can even position themselves in front of prospects or sectors where previously they would need advertising budgets or referrals into a marketplace – often taking them from an unknown brand into a known organisation simply through social media.
The most savvy marketers I speak to have ensured that all correspondence in their social marketing material refers them to corporate websites, brochure content, a specific consultants contact details or a place where a call to action is prompted. Similarly, their printed material carried details on their social media presence.
NetworkingSome of the best fee-earners I meet are unsurprisingly some of the best networkers. They continually cement the common assumption that professional services business development is highly relationship driven, and they are experts in starting and building these relationships.
We’ll attend two to three open networking events a month and meet new prospects, and socialise with existing clients that are also there. However, since the dawn of LinkedIn, Xing and Ning, we can do all of this online.
LinkedIn allows me to prospect and identify suitable targets I would like to work with, Xing offers a range of areas exclusive to certain sectors or firms – allowing me to socialise and email them; and Ning can be used as a social network just for your own organisation of circle of colleagues. When I started to realise that I could do all the things on these websites that I could do by attending the real-life networking events – my confidence grew in being able to maximise opportunities simply by online networking. A contact actually joined our firm recently based on an initial discussion that started on LinkedIn.
Facilitate introductionsLinkedIn has a referral system where you can ‘recommend’ contacts and write a mini testimonial for them, it’s also a great way of learning which of your contacts could facilitate your next referral into a potential new client organisation. Remember, you don’t need to do it all online – my colleague will often discover the head of a potential client is a contact of one if his contacts, so will then telephone his own contact to discuss the possible facilitation of a meeting or drink that way; a perfect example of mixing the traditional networking opportunity with new.
Arrange events and promoteMany firm’s events programmes are promoted through existing database contacts, advertisements and invites in the press. My colleague’s daughter recently organised her 21st birthday party entirely through Facebook. She invited the guests, booked the DJ, hired the venue and promoted the party simply through the social networking site. I think the question for marketers should not be ‘how do we do this?’ but more simply, ‘When will we start?’ With budgets tighter than ever, this opportunity has never been so appealing.
I’ve been tweeting and it doesn’t seem to make me any money!And you shouldn’t expect it to. Twitter was set up to share and communicate – and that’s exactly what the best business development professionals use it for. Every update or tweet automatically updates my LinkedIn profile status, saving me time, and through that professional firms can publish their latest articles, news and services. All those updates are now seen by my LinkedIn contacts. Through this means, it is a highly powerful channel to expose your business.
Ok, so can you make money from it then?I’ve talked about how to link your social media activity together and how to use it for things that you may have not realised before but the partners still want a return. The simple answer is, by integrating what I’ve discussed here into an overall marketing strategy, the investment in using social media can help facilitate leads, increase your brand presence and promote your products – helping you to increase your fee-income. The best business developers however, integrate traditional techniques whilst embracing the new ones – and if you are able to successfully do that, you’re likely to be commanding a very rosy future indeed.
Imagine a marketing channel that offers almost infinite opportunities to promote, interact and prospect new business – it is here in the realm of social media marketing.
Don’t just think of it as a money making marketing opportunityAs websites such as Linkedin, Facebook, Xing and co begin to mature, marketers and fee-earners are often asking themselves how these can now help their firm make revenue. The simple answer is – as standalone websites or without using them intelligently - they won’t. This however, is the same as a print brochure, branded pen or any other marketing activity which is not linked together with your other business development activity. So what are successful users doing to integrate it?
It will build your brand, not just boost itIn my experience, few tools above digital marketing and social media websites have done more to take a firm’s brand to the next level, allowing firms to reach out to new audiences, target specific sectors and interact with clients
A recent statement by PepsiCo confirmed that they were now spending 60% of their forthcoming financial yearly budget on online advertising, proving that large multi-national organisations see online promotion as a key and expanding channel. Social networking sites give you opportunities to create your own company profile page, forum, group and ‘alias’ where people can link with your firm, discuss it, and often be a ‘fan.’
In what other environment have you been able to attract 100 ‘fans’ to your brand, as we recently did – and keep them closely aligned with updates on your events, articles and products posted to them – where the only investment is your time? The answer is probably in few other ways. Smaller firms can even position themselves in front of prospects or sectors where previously they would need advertising budgets or referrals into a marketplace – often taking them from an unknown brand into a known organisation simply through social media.
The most savvy marketers I speak to have ensured that all correspondence in their social marketing material refers them to corporate websites, brochure content, a specific consultants contact details or a place where a call to action is prompted. Similarly, their printed material carried details on their social media presence.
NetworkingSome of the best fee-earners I meet are unsurprisingly some of the best networkers. They continually cement the common assumption that professional services business development is highly relationship driven, and they are experts in starting and building these relationships.
We’ll attend two to three open networking events a month and meet new prospects, and socialise with existing clients that are also there. However, since the dawn of LinkedIn, Xing and Ning, we can do all of this online.
LinkedIn allows me to prospect and identify suitable targets I would like to work with, Xing offers a range of areas exclusive to certain sectors or firms – allowing me to socialise and email them; and Ning can be used as a social network just for your own organisation of circle of colleagues. When I started to realise that I could do all the things on these websites that I could do by attending the real-life networking events – my confidence grew in being able to maximise opportunities simply by online networking. A contact actually joined our firm recently based on an initial discussion that started on LinkedIn.
Facilitate introductionsLinkedIn has a referral system where you can ‘recommend’ contacts and write a mini testimonial for them, it’s also a great way of learning which of your contacts could facilitate your next referral into a potential new client organisation. Remember, you don’t need to do it all online – my colleague will often discover the head of a potential client is a contact of one if his contacts, so will then telephone his own contact to discuss the possible facilitation of a meeting or drink that way; a perfect example of mixing the traditional networking opportunity with new.
Arrange events and promoteMany firm’s events programmes are promoted through existing database contacts, advertisements and invites in the press. My colleague’s daughter recently organised her 21st birthday party entirely through Facebook. She invited the guests, booked the DJ, hired the venue and promoted the party simply through the social networking site. I think the question for marketers should not be ‘how do we do this?’ but more simply, ‘When will we start?’ With budgets tighter than ever, this opportunity has never been so appealing.
I’ve been tweeting and it doesn’t seem to make me any money!And you shouldn’t expect it to. Twitter was set up to share and communicate – and that’s exactly what the best business development professionals use it for. Every update or tweet automatically updates my LinkedIn profile status, saving me time, and through that professional firms can publish their latest articles, news and services. All those updates are now seen by my LinkedIn contacts. Through this means, it is a highly powerful channel to expose your business.
Ok, so can you make money from it then?I’ve talked about how to link your social media activity together and how to use it for things that you may have not realised before but the partners still want a return. The simple answer is, by integrating what I’ve discussed here into an overall marketing strategy, the investment in using social media can help facilitate leads, increase your brand presence and promote your products – helping you to increase your fee-income. The best business developers however, integrate traditional techniques whilst embracing the new ones – and if you are able to successfully do that, you’re likely to be commanding a very rosy future indeed.
Gold Medal Products sees international sales sizzle!
http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/print-edition/2010/11/05/gold-medal-sees-international-sales.html
Great news for us, for the fun food industry and for manufacturing in the area!
Great news for us, for the fun food industry and for manufacturing in the area!
For business, social media is here to stay. Now, there's proof!
http://fuelingnewbusiness.com/2010/01/27/study-the-hype-is-real-social-media-has-arrived-in-business/
Finally, someone has quantifiable proof that social media is not only here to stay, but is an effective tool for many of the most successful companies. If you've ever had your doubts, take a look for yourself.
Finally, someone has quantifiable proof that social media is not only here to stay, but is an effective tool for many of the most successful companies. If you've ever had your doubts, take a look for yourself.
Time to get things poppin'!
I guess the best thing to do is introduce myself first. I'm Ron Gerlach, Director of Marketing for Gold Medal Products. It's a job--and a company--that defines the word "fun!" We manufacture and distribute "fun food" and equipment all over the world. You know, the kind of stuff that you find at state fairs, theaters, sporting events? Yeah...you got it! Makes your mouth water even now, huh?
But this blog is more than promoting fun food. Because our business is in making ordinary people extraordinarily successful! So I'll share with you tips, ideas, findings and useful info on how to grow a business, how to market a business...and generally, how to have fun in business!
Oh, and we'll throw in some extras from time to time. Just to keep things poppin'!
So, let's get started!
But this blog is more than promoting fun food. Because our business is in making ordinary people extraordinarily successful! So I'll share with you tips, ideas, findings and useful info on how to grow a business, how to market a business...and generally, how to have fun in business!
Oh, and we'll throw in some extras from time to time. Just to keep things poppin'!
So, let's get started!
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